


when the fever calls

by transstevebucky



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Werewolves, weird dad daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-08 11:03:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14103963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: The first time Paul sees it he assumes he’s hallucinating.It says something about him that the first response to seeing something unbelievable is a faint thought ofI’ve finally cracked, and that instead of ruminating on it he continues lacing up his boots.He’s seen plenty of weird things in his life, and the dead are walking, but he thinks it’s fair he draws the line at werewolves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i had a thought a week and a half-or-so ago about werewolf daryl and oblivious paul and the concept of them being best friends who flirt constantly and dont want it to be a thing but also secretly do and ... now this exists. so. i guess i have no impulse control
> 
> title comes from powerwolf's "night of the werewolves" because i love being obvious

The first time Paul sees it he assumes he’s hallucinating.

It says something about him that the first response to seeing something unbelievable is a faint thought of _I’ve finally cracked_ , and that instead of ruminating on it he continues lacing up his boots. That instead of being concerned for himself, he pushes the thoughts of gouges in the mud outside the trailer far out of his head. 

He’s seen plenty of weird things in his life, and the dead are walking, but he thinks it’s fair he draws the line at werewolves.

**___________**

The gouges in the mud are deep. Long, thin, marked at the end by the print of thick paws.

Paul stares for a long time at them, even after telling himself it’s nothing, because he’d know if they had a Great Dane or _something_ , surely? He’d know if one of the Hilltop residents was hiding some huge beast of a dog?

He ignores the part of his brain that tells him this isn’t a dog, not even close, that it’s something closer to _wolf_ , that maybe those eyes that he’d seen tracking him through shrubbery last week hadn’t been a delusion brought to life from sleep deprivation. That maybe they’d signalled something bigger, more dangerous than anything else in this new world; worse than the Saviors, the undead walking.

He scuffs the mud with his boot and covers the tracks of an animal too big to be tamed, because he has the weird thought that he should be the only one to see this. That whatever made these marks, they made them for Paul and Paul alone.

That’s just the start.

He wanders around Hilltop aimlessly for the day; there’s not much to do today, and everyone’s sort of meandering, like it’s back Before. There’s kids genuinely smiling around the place, and Maggie’s leaning into Glenn’s steady form at the front of Barrington house, so he soaks it all up and takes over watch from Kal and takes the break as easily as he can stomach.

Since the war’s finished, there’s been something light in the air. Fresh, new, warmer; even with fall coming fast, it’s like the light won’t leave. They’ve lost so many people now, so many beloved, but even with broken hearts the world pushes forward, and they grow.

It’s Daryl that shocks him out of his thoughts.

A hand settles on his shoulder for a too-short moment before Paul turns his head to meet Daryl’s strong gaze, and the warmth of it leaves his breath catching in his throat.

Paul isn’t sure how to handle Daryl Dixon; a man who thanked him for saving his life before punching him in the face, a man who brought a child back from the brink of death, who laughs softly at Maggie’s jokes and teases Glenn and fondly plays with Judith’s fingers and Hershel’s toes. 

He’s never met anyone like him. He won’t again, he thinks.

Someone who is so effortlessly kind and compassionate, loyal to his bones, but who can snap at nothing when he’s tired or hungry or _anything_ enough. Daryl’s never done wrong by him, not really; their first encounter doesn’t count, since that actually was Paul’s fault for all he denies it.

He even cooks well, which was a discovery and a half -Daryl had moved out of Alexandria after the war, came to Hilltop with Carl in the passenger seat and a boot full of supplies, and he’s been in Paul’s trailer ever since. It wasn’t something they ever talked about. 

Daryl hates too-big houses, so a room in Barrington was never something he was going to deal well with, and everyone else had their trailers packed to capacity. Paul, with his bundles of books and knives and trinkets scavenged from homes, had no one.

It was a foregone conclusion, he thinks. Like fate, if he believed in that sort of thing any more.

“You good?”

“Yeah,” Paul says, shrugging, and Daryl smiles in that way that means his mouth barely moves but his eyes go warm, “good as anyone is these days. Heard Maggie’s been pushing you into the gardening.”

Daryl snorts. “Keeps playin’ the healing mother card. Only do it ‘cause if I didn’t I think she might rip me a new goddamn asshole.”

Paul laughs, head bent back, and there’s another moment he’s sure he’s imagining, because for a second -just one- he thinks he sees Daryl watching him with something like longing.

The look’s gone before he can examine it properly, so he just stares out ahead at the fields surrounding Hilltop and the woods beyond it, tries to push down the hope in his chest.

“How’s Carl doing?”

Rick’s son is the kind of fiery that even now scares the shit out of Paul. The strength on that kid is otherworldly, but he’s still only fifteen; he might help around Hilltop and Alexandria, might be his father’s second in command when it comes down to it, but he’d almost died in the war, and that’s not something you forget easily.

Daryl’s eyes go haunted for a second, and Paul wonders what he’d seen when he’d found Carl, bleeding out on the outskirts of Alexandria after being shot by Negan in the thigh. Left to die like a dog in the street. 

Frankly, it’s a miracle Negan lasted as long as he did before Rick and Maggie executed him. Hurting a kid -hurting _Rick’s_ kid- is a death sentence, these days. Something you don’t do.

“Good as anyone is,” he says, “better, though, I think. Rick sent a letter sayin’ he’s trying to convince Michonne to make a moat ‘round the house. Keeps playing the near-death card.” Daryl’s voice is wry, faintly amused.

“I’m glad he’s well enough to be making demands.”

Daryl rolls his eyes. “Kid got shot a month after the outbreak. First thing he did when he woke up that time was asking about his friend. Think he deserves some sorta reward.”

“Even if it’s a moat?”

Daryl looks him in the eye, then up-and-down. “Especially if it’s a moat.”

**___________**

Paul forgets about the eyes peering through greenery. Forgets about the fur laying in tufts around the trailer. 

It’s not like the place is ever truly clean; with Daryl gutting his kills in the kitchen and Paul’s stacks of books lining the walkspace, it’s a miracle the trailer hasn’t succumbed to rot like everything else has in the new world.

He can’t help but feel like he’s missing something, though, every time Daryl slides a look through his too-long bangs.

**___________**

“...No, kid, we can’t.”

“But Daryl, Dad’s getting-.”

“Kid. I’m workin’ on it. I promise. You gotta hold your silence for a while more, but I’ll tell you when it’s worked out.”

There’s brief silence, the sound of a ragged breath in the otherwise silent living room. Paul pauses in transit to the bathroom, sure he’s not meant to be hearing anything but unable to curb the want to spy.

“Okay,” Carl says, because Paul’s deduced it has to be Carl - Daryl’s voice is too affectionate to be anyone else, “fine. But I hate it.”

Paul peers through the crack of the door and spots as Daryl curls Carl into his chest with strong hands, and Carl shakes his head against Daryl’s shoulder with a huff that could be a sob.

Just as he thinks he’s gotten away with it, backing up to step into the bathroom, Daryl’s eyes meet his across the sea of books and papers. 

He shakes his head.

The thought of that small movement sits in Paul’s gut for hours after.

**___________**

Maggie has a thing for looking like she belongs in every space she visits, so Paul doesn’t even realise she’s lying on the scratched up couch until she coughs.

He flinches, thinks that one of these days she’s going to give him a heart attack, and leans down to kiss her on the cheek. “Could you not kill me before my time?”

Maggie hums, folds back a corner of the book in her lap. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Paul hunches over in one of the chairs around the rickety table Daryl made with his bare hands, slowly tugs his boots off and then pulls his feet into his hands. They hurt like fuck; he’s spent the last three days on a solitary run, and a lot of that time’s been spent climbing buildings with anything he could find because the staircases had been decimated.

Fuck the Saviors. Dead or not, they’re ruining his fucking life.

“What do you need?” Paul asks, because Maggie’s the weird sort of neat that means she kind of hates being in Paul’s trailer unless she has to be.

Maggie eyes him with a set to her jaw that worries him. He busies himself with taking out his knives instead of focusing on it. 

“I need to know that those huge paw prints ain’t from some bear that managed to get in the gates.”

Paul considers lying. Then he considers jumping out of the window. “I’m not sure where they’re from.”

Not a lie. Not strictly truthful, either. They have to be from an animal, but no animal he’s ever seen leaves tracks that big. Maybe he should talk to Daryl about it - get his expert opinion, but some deep-rooted part of him lurches at that. So maybe not.

Maggie slides to her feet in one elegant swoop. She’s every bit as terrifying as she had been when he’d met her, and Paul would do anything for her. “Could you keep an eye out? I know everyone’s trained nowadays, but you’re one of the only ones I trust to deal with a threat like that if it came down to it.”

Paul misses the disappointed slope of her shoulders as she leaves the room; he’s too focused on a patch of golden brown fur on the table.

**___________**

“I spy with my little eye.... Something beginning with ‘d’.”

“S’it depression?”

“No, Daryl,” Paul sighs. They’re somewhere outside of the usual boundaries they use for their runs; supplies are running low and Maggie won’t say anything but she’s panicking. Daryl had dragged him from bed at the crack of dawn this morning in the least sexy way in the world and piled him into one of the many trucks the Hilltop’s acquired. “You can’t see my lingering depression.”

Daryl squints at him. “Depends how hard I look.”

Paul grins. Daryl rolls his eyes back and takes a sharp turn around a long-since destroyed Humvee. Dead hands reach from underneath, and Daryl says, “ten points,” under his breath as the car bumps over one of them.

“Any other guesses, Mr. Hunter Sir?”

Daryl’s peering through the window like he’s watching something that Paul can’t see, but Paul’s used to that. Daryl’s eyes are creepily, inhumanly strong, and it’s kept most of Hilltop fed more often than not. “Diversion?”

Paul honks the little horn he’d stolen from Enid last night to signify victory. Daryl’s sigh is deep, oppressive, and weirdly hot.

“Your turn.”

Daryl takes a while to respond; it gets to the point Paul’s sure he’s not going to bother, that he’s done putting up with his bullshit for the day, but then a smile creeps over Daryl’s face and Paul knows he’s in trouble.

“I spy with my little eye, somethin’ beginning with ‘w’.”

“Walker?”

“Nope.”

“Water?”

“Nah.”

Paul stares around. “Inside or outside?”

“...Both.”

“Woxygen?”

“Stop.”

“Wallflowers?”

Daryl huffs. “Gonna kick your goddamn ass, Rovia.”

“Walkway.”

“How big you think this goddamn truck is, man?”

“Fine! I give up! What was it?”

Daryl’s eyes blink a little too slowly before cracking open again. “If you guess, maybe I’ll share the first food we find with you.”

Paul shakes Daryl’s wrist, since his hand is settled on the gearstick. “Deal.”

**___________**

Scavenging with Daryl is the kind of easy Paul thought he’d lost after the turn.

It’s a lot of silent gestures and nodding and knowing their movements like the skin on the backs of their hands. 

Daryl goes left, Paul goes right; he finds a jackpot in the form of racks of baby clothes that aren’t moth eaten too badly, and takes down three walkers before they get the clothes stinking like everything else in the world right now.

Across the store, there’s a hoot of delight, and then Daryl’s saying “fuckin’ finally, been looking for _ages_!”

When Paul works his way around (kid shoes, boots for Carl and Enid, belts, some of those non-prescription reading glasses that’re needed nowadays), he finds Daryl sat with a bright flag around his shoulders and a grin on his face.

“Never had you for the pride type,” Paul says, but his heart’s warm with affection because Daryl looks genuinely happy like this, a rainbow around him like a security blanket.

“Man, I was born and raised in goddamn Georgia, it’s about time I let myself feel good about this.”

Paul’s so overcome with emotion he kicks Daryl’s shoulder instead of doing something sweet like cry or hug him.

Daryl gets it anyway.

**___________**

Daryl’s smoking on the porch of Barrington House by the time Paul’s done with his designated chores.

(Maggie keeps telling him they’re not _chores_ , they’re _duties_ , but either way he’s been ferrying baskets of laundry to little old Arthur Steinbaum, so he’s calling them what he wants).

“That’ll kill you,” Paul says, and steals the half-burnt cigarette from between Daryl’s lips.

Daryl sighs and tugs another crumpled roll-up from his pocket before lighting it off the one Paul’s stolen. “‘Bout time something did.”

Paul snorts. “I see your cheery disposition forges on despite the state of things.”

“Well, we gotta keep our heads up.”

It takes two seconds before they’re laughing, folded against each other and wheezing hard.

“What’ve you been doing?”

Paul thinks back over the day; back to this morning, when he’d left the trailer to find more scratches in the mud outside, prints leading away from the trailer, the fact he’d scuffed over them again instead of telling anyone. Maggie’s list of chores he’d had to complete; moving laundry back and forth, looking after Hershel, the watch he’d spent talking with Kal about which superheroes were better.

“Nearly knocked Kal flat for saying Iron Man was better than Captain America.”

It’s true, too; he’d almost exploded when Kal had started talking about Tony fucking Stark being the real hero out of the two.

Daryl rolls his eyes. “He only does that to get to you, y’know. An’, anyways, Black Panther’s always gonna beat all their asses.”

“You’re right, obviously, but out of the two there’s no way _Stark_ wins,” Paul insists, taking a final drag of his cigarette and stomping it out under his boot. “Like, Rogers is a Socialist, isn’t straight, loves people, genuinely cares; Stark funded war criminals and only stopped when it hurt _him_.”

Daryl hands him another cigarette. “You ain’t gotta convince me, man. Anyone who thinks Rogers is the fool is a fucking idiot and shoulda been shot on sight in the war.”

Paul gives him a fist bump. “This is why I love you, Mr. Dixon.”

The flush that hits Daryl’s ears warms Paul for a couple hours after, even when they’re watching little Judith toddle excitedly behind Carl, both of them wearing matching hats and giggling like the kids they’re meant to be.

**___________**

Paul spends a lot of his time these days being teased by teenagers.

It’s the kind of life he’d never expected, back Before, and now he can’t think of anything he’d like more.

Having Carl mocking him at his back and Enid teasing him about his beard hourly keeps him on his toes, and it has the added benefit of getting to hear how much of a sap Daryl Dixon really is.

“...and he got me these comics even though it took two extra hours on the run clearing walkers, isn’t that cool?” Enid is telling him, rolling on the balls of her feet with said comics clutched to her chest.

Paul knows for a fact Glenn’s been searching around for her for more than an hour, now, but he’s not about to give up the gossip only kids give him. “Heard one time he went on a run for Michonne just because she said she missed lotion.”

He’d more than heard that story. He’d been there for it; from the moment Michonne made the comment to the glint in Daryl’s eye as he shouldered his bow, box of lotion in his arms as Paul made an exit through a crowd of the dead.

Experiencing that reality of Daryl in his element was probably the first in a line of steps he’d missed as he’d fallen deeper in love. There’s something about him that’s so deeply good that makes Paul feel simultaneously smaller and stronger.

Enid becomes the human version of an exclamation point at this reveal. “Really? God! He’s so fucking cool!”

Paul smiles and bites his lip as he keeps on mucking the horses out. He swears there’s something broken about the mare they’d taken in; nothing should shit that massively, but every time he complains Maggie pats him on the head like she’s soothing a dog.

“If y’all actually did any work, maybe this place wouldn’t be a mess all the time,” Maggie says, coming out of nowhere like the world’s most righteous ghost.

She’s got baby Hershel cradled to her chest, his tiny head in a cute sun cap too big for him. There’s a smile on her face that says she’s not really angry, though, so Paul just shrugs, unrepentant. “Maybe if you didn’t use the excuse of being a mother…”

Enid watches them bicker for a moment before stepping back. “You both scare me.”

Paul thinks that’s a little unfair. He’s seen Enid kick a Savior so hard in the balls he fucking ruptured and then bled out, so she can’t talk.

“Glenn’s lookin’ for you,” Maggie tells Enid, and Enid nods before scurrying off in the direction of the trailers, “and Daryl’s been doin’ that thing.”

‘That thing’ means Daryl’s been silent except for snide insults, as Paul finds out when he finds him.

The other residents are leaving a wide berth around him, like he’s thirty seconds from exploding, and Paul settles beside him with a huff.

“Stop scaring everyone.”

“Ain’t tryna scare anyone,” Daryl grunts, more growl than voice, “goddamn _hurtin’_ , not my fault if everyone thinks that means I’m about to commit atrocities.”

Paul shrugs. “Either way, it’s pissing Maggie off. She said, and I quote, ‘if he keeps this up, the crops are gonna revolt’.”

Daryl scoffs. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Maggie thinks it is,” Paul tells him, “and I do, too. You haven’t been like this in weeks, Daryl, what’s going on?”

Daryl pulls his shoulders closer together, like he can evaporate into thin air. 

Considering his sheer mass; six foot of muscle and shoulders, it just makes him look a little like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

“Bones hurt. Like someone’s settin’ me on fire again and again with no fuckin’ relief. Can’t do fuck all without feeling like I’m bein’ torn apart and put together wrong.”

Paul winces.

In the weeks and months after the Saviors, when Daryl was at his most bloodthirsty and furious, he spent a lot of time soothing aches and pains that never seemed to leave. 

The pains come less to him, now -Paul’s taken note of it, because Daryl lives with him and is important and Paul _loves_ him, in every way he can love him. But there’s still too many days like today, where Daryl starts snarling at everything and everyone in his way and can’t move without something crunching in his body.

It’s been a month since the last time, pretty much exactly. If Paul could think of anything else except how he can help, he might notice why that is.

As it is, he shoves Daryl into the trailer with gentle hands.

“Lay down,” Paul orders him, and by the time he’s gathered up all the oils he’s looted on too-long runs, Daryl’s positioned the way he always is for this; on the floor of the trailer, bright pink yoga mat underneath him, arms splayed. “Good boy.”

Daryl scoffs. “Fuck off, prick.”

They’re quiet while Paul warms the oil in his hands. Daryl just breathes deep and slow, and there’s bruises all over the strong line of his back that makes Paul want to vomit and protect him in equal measure. Both reactions are stupid and years too late.

“Used to go to professionals for this,” Daryl tells him, as Paul’s rubbing up his bruised blue shoulder blades. The scars are knotted and tight under his hands. “Guy called Riz. Booked it in for three hours a month just ‘cause it was the only way I could walk after.”

“No happy endings?”

Daryl snorts a laugh. “Unfortunately. Dude was huge, man, massive shoulders, huge gut, thick thighs. Wanted to ride him into next year.”

“You just keep breaking my heart, mister,” Paul fakes a sigh, “talk more about how I’ll never be your type.”

“Ain’t never had a type.” Daryl’s voice is soft, careful, the vocal equivalent of stepping on eggshells.

Paul rubs his fingers in firmer to distract himself from the blush crawling up his throat. Fucking Christ. “Except men.”

“Except men,” Daryl echoes. “To be fair, though, I only ever slept with four dudes. Dated two of them, the other two were fuckbuddies.”

“Hm,” Paul strokes his fingers over a knot in Daryl’s lower back and then digs in with his knuckles until Daryl whimpers, pretty and high, “so I still have a chance?”

“Depends. You gonna treat me right?”

“If you’re a very good boy.”

Daryl’s laugh cracks halfway through until it’s almost animalistic; growling, deep. Paul has to shift himself onto his knees to he doesn’t accidentally rut up against him like a fucking teenager.

“You don’t talk a lot,” Paul murmurs, and in the light of the trailer, Daryl’s skin glistening with oil, he doesn’t think he’s ever felt more alight with emotion in his life, “but you say everything.”

“The fuck even? You readin’ more of that fake deep John Green crap again?”

“You love my fake deep John Green crap,” Paul chastises, and it’s not even a lie.

Daryl spent two weeks healing up from a dislocated shoulder listening to one of Paul’s audio books, and he’d blushed so hard when Paul walked in he’d looked more blood than man. 

“Eh.” Daryl tilts his head to the side, soft hair falling into his narrow eyes. “I just like knowing what shit you’re gonna pull on any given day.”

“That’s part of the fun of being my live-in sugardaddy,” Paul hums on a sigh, and Daryl’s shoulders rock beneath him as he cackles, “you never know.”

“Wouldn’t call it fun.” A pause, then, “wouldn’t call it the worst thing in the world.”

Paul’s so touched he forgets to snark back.

**___________**

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck _you_.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

Paul stares into his trailer for five seconds before closing the door again, taking a deep breath, and stepping inside. “Sorry, what’s happening?”

“Teaching the kid nuance,” Daryl says, patting Carl on the shoulder. “It’s going okay.”

“And Rick approved?”

“Dad never approves of anything unless it’s a dumb as hell plan. Ask Glenn, he’ll back me up.” 

Paul shrugs and sits down, because neither of them are exactly wrong. Rick spends half his time running from bad plans and the other half of his time miraculously surviving despite said terrible plans. Paul’s long-since stopped questioning Rick Grimes’ intelligence.

He’s alive, which says a lot for anyone these days.

Even if sometimes Michonne looks at him like she wants to punch him a little.

“What about ‘f _uuu_ ck you!’? What does that mean?”

Carl leans back in his seat surrounded by textbooks and hums thoughtfully. “Fake anger, amusement, or maybe… Exasperation? It depends on the situation, I think.”

“That’s why we’re studying nuance,” Daryl says knowingly, as if Paul hasn’t watched him make armpit farts for ten minutes straight before, “you can’t keep going into a fight half-cocked with no witty one-liners. If you die on any of us with anything but ‘hasta la vista, baby’, we’re going to disown you.”

“You can’t disown me if I’m dead!”

“I will goddamn try, kid. Do not test me.”

Paul stares at the ceiling and wonders how this became his _fucking_ life. He spends so much time doing that these days.

God, he needs a pay raise.

Or a new group of friends.

Hell, maybe the mountains are free of the dead and he can roam like a lowly farmer tending to his oats.

Anything’s better than watching Daryl Dixon having a word battle with a fifteen year old.


	2. call the morning star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul reaches out for the CD player.
> 
> Daryl’s hand smacks out of nowhere and catches his wrist, fingers clenching on the edge of too-tight. “Do not.”
> 
> “But,” Paul tries, and wonders if maybe his pout will work. 
> 
> It doesn’t.
> 
> “If you play anythin’ close to Rick’s shit I’m gonna slice open your testicles and use them as a necklace.”
> 
> Paul sighs, leans back. Puts his feet up on the dash. “Will you accept Britney?”
> 
> “...Spears?”
> 
> “I’m gay,” Paul tells him, arms crossed over his chest, “obviously Spears.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's yet more werewolf daryl ft. pining+oblivious paul and weird gay uncle daryl !

Paul’s always half-hated driving.

Back before the Turn, it meant tucking road rage back down and being blinded by the sun on hot asphalt. 

Now, it means steering carefully around traffic snarls and walkers, listening to one of Daryl’s godawful mixtapes and trying not to fall asleep at the wheel.

It’s easier when Daryl’s with him, even if he’s slumped against the window, nose leaving marks on the glass every time he lets out a soft whining snore. It’s easier knowing that if he pulls over whenever he can Daryl will swap with him, no questions asked, take over with a grunt and a huff.

 _Usually_ easier.

It’s significantly more difficult to concentrate when Daryl’s body spasms and his face cracks off the dirty glass with a resounding, hollow _thump_ as he wakes from a nightmare.

“Godfuckingshit.”

“Bad dream?” Paul asks, but he knows. Bad dreams are almost all anyone has; and even when that’s not true, even when the monsters don’t come out to play in the dark, sometimes the good dreams are worse.

“Always,” Daryl tells him, prods around his nose like he’s checking for a break. 

“Need me to cuddle it better?”

“If you don’t give that shit up, maybe I’ll take you up on your offer. See how you feel then.”

“Why, Daryl,” Paul says, and Daryl eyes the distance from his seat to his gun, shifting on the dash, like he’s trying to figure out if it’s worth the stretch to kill himself or Paul, “you’d make my heart complete.”

“And your meat beat?”

Paul snorts so hard his hand trembles and the car swerves. Daryl reaches over with a practised hand and a faux-pissed off smile as he fixes it.

“Shoulda known you’d be shit at drivin’,” he sighs, and Paul tucks his arms behind his head just to be a dick. It backfires when Daryl leans right over him and almost crawls into his lap to steer right. “Way that fucking van swerved when you stole it.”

“In fairness,” Paul responds, and prays to a God he’s not sure he believes in that he doesn’t get hard in this extremely precarious situation, “I’d never taken anything that big for a spin before.”

Daryl rolls his eyes and starts unfastening Paul’s belt. Paul slides his seat back and lets the truck come to a slow stop, halfway across a bridge that looked dodgy before they’d set out on it and looks worse now they’re parked. 

“Swap,” Daryl tells him, because Daryl never acknowledges his innuendos unless it’s the worst possible moment for it -like the time they got captured and Paul made a dick joke, and Daryl had laughed so loud the ropes had cut into their skin. 

Paul wriggles around under Daryl for a second before sliding over the gearstick with a noise he hopes is elegantly sexy instead of faintly embarrassing.

“We’re getting good at this,” Paul tells him, and tucks a bit of Daryl’s hair behind his ear. His very cute, small ear, with a too-pointed edge. He’s never seen that part of them before, but then. It’s not like he makes a habit of staring at that part of him, not when Daryl’s arms are usually so perfectly on display. “We should do it more.”

“Man, I just had a dream about my cock gettin’ ripped off, can we not do this right now?”

“Afraid your arousal over my appealing good looks will lead to a crash?”

“Afraid one’a these days your massive head’s gonna get us dead.” Daryl pauses, narrows his eyes just as Paul opens his mouth. “Don’t try it.”

“But you make it so easy!”

Daryl slides him a look and bumps over a long-dead walker with a muted mumble of ‘ten points’. “Easy’s sleazy. Buy me dinner first.”

There’s silence for a long while, before Paul slowly reaches out for the CD player.

Daryl’s hand smacks out of nowhere and catches his wrist, fingers clenching on the edge of too-tight. “Do not.”

“But,” Paul tries, and wonders if maybe his pout will work. 

It doesn’t.

“If you play anythin’ close to Rick’s shit I’m gonna slice open your testicles and use them as a necklace.”

Paul sighs, leans back. Puts his feet up on the dash. “Will you accept Britney?”

“...Spears?”

“I’m gay,” Paul tells him, arms crossed over his chest, “obviously Spears.”

In the end, it’s Daryl who turns the player on. Paul’s loss is worth it when he gets to see Daryl start crying his way through _Toxic_.

**___________**

Daryl’s sorting through a pile of boxes in a store room when Paul notices it.

He’s just bent over, trying to work his way through old freeze-dried packets of pasta to determine if it’s worth taking, when he sees the flash of fur through the shelves.

He freezes. Stares at the gap and hopes it’s a walker just really into high fashion, instead of some kind of dog. 

He’s not the biggest fan of dogs; hasn’t been since one of the foster families that took him in had a creepy chihuahua who used to watch him like it knew his deepest secrets. He spent a lot of time locking doors that summer.

“Um,” he mumbles, just loud enough for Daryl to hear. He can’t take his eyes off the pale coat of the thing three feet away, even with his calves protesting the squat he’s in. 

“What?” Daryl asks, voice like gravel, one of his strong hands settling over Paul’s shoulder. “You alright, man?”

“I think,” Paul begins, and the creature shifts. One bright eye stares at him through the old boxes of rice. “We have company.”

Daryl’s frozen at his side, now, and if Paul weren’t looking for it, he wouldn’t notice; the slight shake of his hand before he pulls himself together. “Christ. Alright. You stay here, I got this.”

“What’re you gonna do? Tell it to piss off?”

Daryl wrinkles his nose. “Worse’n that.”

He’s slinking around the aisle before Paul can ask what the fuck that _means_ , and then there’s the sound of the creature yipping before heavy footsteps leave the store they’re scavenging.

It’s a couple minutes before Daryl reappears, fur in his fingernails and a graze along his chin. 

“Fuckin’ pup went and nipped me,” he grumbles, sinking down next to Paul, and for a moment Paul is entirely, completely sure his eyes glow too bright in the dark room.

Daryl grabs a box of sauce and starts searching, and Paul tries to brush off the feeling that he’s missing something really fucking important.

**___________**

“So what was it?”

“Hm?”

Paul rolls his eyes at the side of Daryl’s face. Daryl shoulders his crossbow and keeps loading stacks of magazines into the camper they’d brought along for the run. “The thing in the store. What was it? It’s not like you to not kill something we could eat.”

Daryl’s right fist curls, tight and brief, against the door before he closes it softly. “Ain’t nothing. Weren’t harmin’ nobody. Some wolf cub. Didn’t put up a real fight when I pulled it out.”

“You told me you ate a _dog_ once,” Paul reminds him, “and you didn’t kill and eat a wolf?”

“Man.” Daryl’s voice goes low, for a moment, and Paul’s suddenly transported months back into the past, Daryl’s gun raised in his face and Rick standing at his side with an unwavering set jaw. 

He hasn’t been genuinely worried about Daryl hurting him since the day they met (though Daryl realising they saved the Saviors came close; there’d been a minor scuffle then, too, Daryl shoving him against the walls of Hilltop and telling him to stop being a fucking idiot). Now, though, watching as he paces the edge of the vehicle like a caged animal, he wants to reach for his knife.

He doesn’t; knows Daryl well enough to know that he wouldn’t actually hurt him, wouldn’t ever lay a hand on him. That the one time he came close, he’d left for three days and come back with a set of Paul’s favorite albums as an apology.

“Okay,” Paul allows, and thinks about the oddly familiar pale brown fur, the blue eye gazing at him in the darkness, “I’m sorry. Won’t bring it up again.”

“Promise?”

Daryl pokes out one dirty finger, smile going wry, and Paul links his around it without thinking.

“Always, Mr. Dixon.”

**___________**

“Don’t do that again.”

Paul freezes, presses himself back against the rough brick of Barrington House. 

A few feet away, around the corner and speaking in low, growling tones, is Daryl. Paul hadn’t even noticed him when he’d pulled away from a conversation with Millie, one of the six year olds that always ends up dragging him into playing.

“It’s not my fault!” 

The other voice is familiar, low and petulant and angry. Carl. 

Daryl spends so much time with him these days, like some weird uncle-slash-father figure, but then again Paul’s only known them both for a year, maybe just under.

Maybe they’ve always been like this; thick as thieves, constantly snarking at each other and shoving food on each others plates, Daryl gripping Carl by the collar and telling him to calm the fuck down or he’s going to pepper spray him.

“You came out,” Daryl grunts, and Carl sighs like he’s Atlas, the weight of the world on his shoulders, “without permission. Without tellin’ anyone. Last time you did that you nearly got fucking killed, kid.”

“This isn’t then,” Carl says, and Paul really should leave, turn away, go find Millie and her aunt and build a listing sandcastle, “this isn’t like _before_. You know that. I can’t get hurt like before.”

 _What does that even mean?_

He can’t get hurt like before? Because the Saviors are gone? Because Negan’s dead? Because he’s grown a few inches and has an advantage on walkers he didn’t before?

None of the conversation makes _sense_.

“Just because you’re not gonna get hurt as easy doesn’t mean you’re invincible. Glenn thought that, a while back, and now he can’t fucking _see_. Is that what you want? Lose your other goddamn eye because you make some shit mistake? Christ, what if you’d got shot? What if he hadn’t-.”

There’s a scuffle, then, like one of them pushed the other, and then a quiet, barely audible hiss, “shut up.”

“What?” Daryl sounds pissed, now; not the level of pissed off he’d reached when Paul asked about the creature in that store, but not far off it.

“Someone’s close. We should go somewhere else.”

Daryl grunts out an answer Paul doesn’t catch, and then there’s the slow thump of footsteps retreating.

By the time he’s peering back around the corner, the only thing he can see is Daryl’s vest bobbing through the Hilltop, and Carl’s arms flailing as he gesticulates.

**___________**

Alexandria’s not the same, anymore.

The battle with the Saviors (one of the final fights of the war) left a third of the houses caved in, and the rest riddled with bullet holes and smashed glass.

The whole town looks like a patch job; a mix of newly cut wood and metal from the foundations of old houses.

The place Daryl’s got, right on the edge of town, small and rundown compared to the others that have been fixed up more prettily, makes him feel at home.

Before the Turn, he hadn’t had great places to live. Abuse households and toxic households and ugly places falling apart, when he’d been growing up, and even after that most of the apartments he’d lived in had been in shitty, cramped areas. Always shared, always dirty, wiring faulty. If the shitshack didn’t have one breakdown in the time he lived there, he considered it a win.

He knows it’s not much different than what Daryl was used to, that Daryl hated Alexandria as it had been at the beginning. He’d talked about how it made him feel sick to his stomach, a reminder of the class differences that still moved on even after the fall of society; the knowledge that, given half a chance, the old residents of a place like this would have laughed him out before even letting him deliver pizza, let alone moving in.

Maybe that’s why Daryl prefers it this way; the entire town being revamped constantly, new stone structures appearing, wooden houses that feel more shack than home. Maybe that’s why he’d moved to Hilltop, after the war, why he’d immediately shoved his two backpacks of stuff into the second bedroom of Paul’s trailer and looked at home.

Regardless, the new home suits him. 

There’s still a porch, stained with blood from hunts, because Daryl’s never understood the concept of bleaching shit clean. 

It’s also covered in weapons; shelves full of knives and carefully filed down stakes, fire pokers arranged in the shape of a dick on the wall behind the sofa. Three separate racks for his bows; two crossbows, one recurve. 

It’s still hard to see anything about Daryl as a threat, though, when he’s carefully pinning polaroids of his family to his kitchen cupboards.

Judith and Carl are the most heavily featuring, but after that there’s Rick, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn. Baby Hershel. Rosita and Tara. Aaron and Eric. A bundle under the sink of Carol. 

There’s also a few of Paul himself, hanging on a string across the back door; he hadn’t even realised Daryl had taken them, and he sort of wants to burn them. He won’t, though, because past that mortification he’s also really touched by it. That he’s family enough for Daryl to want keepsakes even in a house he barely stays in.

“You’re sort of just soft inside, aren’t you?” Paul asks, when Daryl’s climbed right up on one of the counters to start sticking pins in fuzzy pictures of a kitten Michonne rescued the other week.

“I’ll show you goddamn soft inside,” Daryl grunts, and almost wobbles his way off the counter before rebalancing on his knees, “rip your lungs out. See how soft I am then.”

“You’re so romantic,” Paul tells him, and pulls a tiny stack of Glenn’s towards him. He’s grinning in most of them; wide and bright, small and earnest, adoring and sweet. Even with his eyes milky blue, he looks happy. 

Daryl climbs down and settles on the table, booted feet resting on the top of one of his handcrafted chairs. 

It’s a pretty one, with intricate designs of feathers around the seating, like it’s waiting to take off. Sort of looks like the knife handle he’d gifted Paul on a run; the one he’d spent days carving to perfection, because on top of literally everything else about him, Daryl’s a fucking whittler.

“Rick’s goin’ on about rebuilding the church,” Daryl tells him, and Paul tries not to stare at the bob of his throat as he drinks, the play of his hands around a bottle, “fuckin’ dumbass. You’d think it gets destroyed twice that’s some sort of sign from God, wouldn’t you? Wasn’t even that nice before it.”

“It’s more a symbol, I think. Rebuilding is a lot of work, but in the end if the church is still functional it promotes belief.”

“You keep siding with him and I’m gonna cut your tongue out.”

“I’m sure you could find a lot of uses for my tongue, Daryl.”

Daryl pauses with his lips suctioned around his crinkled water bottle, eyes flat as he gazes across the table. He pulls off with a _pop_ that makes Paul want to tear his skin off in a fit of arousal. Like some weird mating-slash-claiming dance. _Take me, o mighty hunter, take me raw in this field of flowers._

“Suppose I could,” Daryl allows, “if you prove yourself worthy.”

Jesus fucking shit lord. Paul’s going to spontaneously combust.

“Is that some kind of Arthurian come on? If ye shall pull the sword from stone?”

“Was hoping for pushing the sword somewhere else, but sure.” Daryl shrugs, broad shoulders arching up and then down quickly, the wings of an angel. Or the devil. Paul’s too high on badly timed arousal to work out a real metaphor.

“You’re going to raise my hopes,” Paul chides, and thinks about dark brown hair and a scarred back and strong fingers, the entirety of Daryl spread out over his bed, chest heaving. He shoves himself back from the table more for something to do than because he absolutely has to leave.

Daryl still laughs when he leaves, though, so he’s not very successful.

**___________**

“I think your brother’s trying to kill me.”

Rick stares at him for a second before resting one hand on his Colt. “S’there a reason for that? You done anything?”

Paul stares out at the road leading to Alexandria and wonders why he ever decided stealing Rick’s keys was a good idea. “He keeps seducing me, actually, but I love that you have no faith in me.”

If anything, this just makes Rick look more perplexed. (If you asked Glenn, he’d say Rick always looks perplexed, maybe sometimes angry. Glenn hasn’t steered him wrong, yet.)

“Daryl? Our Daryl? Makin’... a pass at you?”

“Is that a problem?”

He loves the way Rick panics, for a moment, before he sees the grin on Paul’s face and then sighs into one dirty hand. “You’re spending too much goddamn time together.”

“That’s what I think,” Paul reminds him, and slumps against the wall and hopes to God this doesn’t sound too pathetic, “does he-. I know he’s gay, obviously, and I know we’re friends. I just want to know if it’s something he does with everyone.”

“Daryl makin’ a pass at anyone seems a little far-fetched.”

Paul remembers a conversation he and Daryl had, one night, both stoned on old weed and splayed across the floor of the trailer. About Daryl trying to flirt with Rick again and again, at the prison, and failing because Rick was blinder than Glenn.

“Hm,” he considers, and decides Daryl won’t hate him for letting this admission slip, “well, he definitely wanted to fuck you at some point, so.”

Rick’s face goes from farmer tan to sunburned in about three seconds flat, mouth curving inwards like he’s sucking on a walker’s left nut. “He-. Daryl _didn’t_ , what are you talking about.”

“I believe he said he wanted to suck you dry and ride you like a pony,” which is a huge exaggeration -Daryl said more along the lines he used to have a massive crush on Rick that turned into a gigantic boner for him-, “but that could be my memory failing me.”

Paul’s never seen Rick look so wrongfooted in his _life_ , not even when Paul had driven away from them in that van all those months ago.

“This ain’t-. This ain’t what you were talking to me about,” Rick settles on, even though his eyes are still screaming _what the fuck_ , “you were asking if Daryl wanted anything to do with anyone.”

“Yeah. I just- I don’t want to go barking up the wrong tree. He’s my best friend, you know, even with Maggie around, and I don’t want to mess it up just because I want to…”

“Suck him dry?”

Paul snorts. “Something like that.”

“Well,” Rick strokes a hand over his scraggly beard, “I don’t think you’re barkin’ at the wrong tree. Think Daryl likes you. Hell, he liked you a lot quicker than he liked any of us. That means something, from him. And you’d be good for him. And I know he’s already good for you.”

Rick looks so achingly sincere his chest aches, for a second, the endless love in his expression pulling behind his ribs. The love between Rick and Daryl, it’s a whole other kind of love from what he’s ever seen; something different from Maggie and Glenn, from Carl and Judith. Not just familial, brotherly. It’s a love forged in blood and iron and trust that never once wavers. Because Daryl’s the person Rick turns to if Michonne isn’t there, because Rick’s the person Daryl depends on to steer him right.

He understands, now, why Daryl had loved Rick at the prison, why he loves him now in a different way. Because despite everything Paul’s seen Rick Grimes do, he’s still such a good person it makes him kind of want to barf.

“Thank you,” he says, and then, patting Rick on the arm, “maybe you should talk to Daryl about the whole ‘wanting to fuck you’ deal.”

Rick stares up at the sky like it could shank him. “I change my mind. You ain’t good for him. You’re evil incarnate.”

**___________**

It’s mortifying, after everything, that the thing that makes Paul think _oh, fucking shit_ , is the way Daryl looks after a shower.

Like, he’s known he likes Daryl for a while. Probably ever since they met, albeit in a different way.

He’s known about his feelings towards Daryl since the time he punched him in the face for saving his life. Since the first time they fought together.

But back then, it had been more of an obvious physical attraction; no one looks at Daryl’s shoulders and doesn’t have a crisis. 

It hadn’t been about seeing him step out of a boiling hot shower, skin flushed pink, hair soft from conditioner. It hadn’t been about wanting to kiss him against a wall and make sweet, adoring love to him. 

Previously, his feelings had been more of the rough-and-tumble ‘let’s fuck it out’ variety.

His feelings pre-Daryl Showering™ had not been any deeper than an insanely strong urge to fuck him until they both collapse.

His feelings, now, watching Daryl hunt around with a towel around his hips and his back on display, are something a lot deeper than that. A lot deeper than friendship, or physical need.

Because apparently seeing Daryl at his most vulnerable is the thing that ticks his brain over from _very fond_ to _very in love with_. 

It’s hard to take his eyes off him, after that. Hard to keep concentrating on one of those adult coloring books Maggie’d given him after he pissed her off fidgeting when Daryl’s slowly drying his hair with his shirt, nose scrunched in irritation.

He’s so gorgeous, which is also something Paul’s always known. It’s an objective fact, really, about Daryl Dixon. He’s dangerous, he’s loyal, he’s strong and courageous, and he’s hot enough to make Paul’s blood boil.

But it feels different, now. Knowing what he does. Seeing Daryl move around the shack-house with ease, scars thrown into relief under the pale lights, skin blotchy as the heat of his shower leaves it. Shoulders moving as he tugs his hair back into a knot at the base of his skull and then pulls on a shirt.

Daryl, obviously, notices. Pauses with one arm in his vest and the other tight against his body. “Why’re you lookin’ at me like that, man?”

“You’re gorgeous,” Paul tells him, and prays his voice doesn’t betray what he actually means. _I want to paint you. I want to lay with you. I want to kiss you. I want you to love me back_. 

Daryl snorts, eyes rolling. “Alright.”

He finishes pulling his clothes on -bright pink socks that squeeze his feet too tight, the ones he wears just because Judy gave them to him-, and then sits down next to Paul.

After a moment, Daryl picks up a pencil and starts coloring in a section of the flower Paul hasn’t gotten to, yet. He sticks in the lines, a darker shade of blue than Paul’s been using, and even that feels endearing and _too much_ , now.

He looks so perfect like this, hair tugged back, strands in his eyes, smelling like soap and musk and man, vest around him like a safety blanket. It makes Paul’s breath catch in his throat.

Makes him ache, want, _need_.

It’s fucking ridiculous. He’s _seen_ Daryl after a shower, seen him covered in blood and guts and stinking to high heaven. Seen him smelling like flowers and sat surrounded by kids as he reads them stories. Seen him in almost every way you can see someone -even naked, because injuries on a run and the recovery that comes after means nudity happens and it’s normal, expected-, but this is what’s doing him in. 

Daryl’s never looked as gentle as he does right now, doodling bubbles into the petals of the flower and then coloring them in different shades.

He’s not falling in love, anymore. He’s already fallen. Laying, sprawled, at the bottom of a ragged cliff face marked with Daryl’s fucking initials. Has been for God knows how long. He’s fucking landed in a snakepit of his own emotions, and he wants to tear his own soul out in frustration at it.

It should have occurred to him earlier. For all he ignores things, doesn’t look too hard at them, he’s not an actual idiot. But he’s just. Never, not once in his life, had this level of emotion directed at someone else. 

Especially someone like Daryl. Someone who cares, endlessly, who will bleed and die and fight for his loved ones. Someone who shuts down at too-quick movements, who calms his voice if he notices anyone else getting upset by it.

He stares at Daryl’s hands, marked with burns and now clear of dirt, and thinks that he’s known for far longer than he wants to admit.

A crash landing hasn’t ever felt this good.

**___________**

“You told Rick I wanted to fuck him.”

“No, I didn’t,” Paul says, which is a lie. 

Daryl, knowing this, slowly pours out Paul’s glass of juice onto the grass they’re sitting on, and glares. “You told Rick I wanted to ride him like a pony.”

Paul doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t. That’d be a real dick move, okay, he’s just. Breathing a little louder. “Me? Never.”

“You _said_ ,” Daryl says, and Paul barely has time to react before he’s shoved onto his back and has Daryl’s thighs slung either side of him, teeth bared, “that I wanted to suck him dry.”

“I want to tell you this is an odd position to have this fight in,” Paul whispers, hopes it doesn’t sound like a gasp, “and that I wasn’t even wrong.”

“D’you know how awkward it is to have a guy you call _brother_ ask if you wanted to fuck him dead?”

Paul stares into Daryl’s eyes; so blue, so fucking blue, narrowed and _so pretty_. “I have to admit that sounds terrible.”

“I’m not mad about it,” Daryl tells him, which is a weird thing to hear from a guy who’s got him pinned, Paul’s wrists in one hand, “I just-. You didn’t even warn me about it, man, what the hell.”

“I didn’t,” Paul agrees, and thinks about why the fuck that is, why the fuck he didn’t tell him. Because Paul was getting Rick’s approval for starting something with Daryl. Because even before he realised how utterly fucked over Daryl he was, he needed to know it was worth pursuing. Worth the risk. “I’m sorry about that.”

A pause, then, “did he at least say he was flattered?”

Daryl makes a groan that makes Paul’s guts want to rearrange themselves. “He said it was cool I felt like that, and he’s sorry if he ever led me on, and he’s with Michonne now but he wants me to know he’s got no problem with me bein’ gay, obviously, and that he’s bi and thought about it, too, a couple times.”

It’s such a rollercoaster of emotions that Paul doesn’t know how to respond for a moment. Just lets himself feel the burning heat of Daryl through the layers of clothes, the strength of his stomach, his hands around Paul’s wrists. “How’d that make you feel?”

“Not sure,” Daryl admits, “stupid, maybe. Coulda fucked him more than once and it wouldn’t’a been something he resented me for, y’know? But I don’t feel like that about him anymore, and he an’ ‘Chonne are probably soulmates, so.”

“You believe in soulmates?”

It’s such an incongruous picture; the guy who held him at gunpoint believing in something like soulmates. Kind of heart-achingly sweet

Daryl almost looks like he blushes, ducking his head until his mouth is an inch from Paul’s. “Maybe. Dunno. Feels like, sometimes, it’s worth believing in.”

Paul smiles, tries not to think about how he could kiss Daryl right now, lean up and taste his mouth and know his tongue like he knows most of the rest of him. “That’s sweet, Daryl.”

“Shut up,” Daryl laughs, and his breath is sweet from all those peppermints he swears he hates, “you’re the worst.”

“Again,” Paul says, and wriggles just to be a shit. He barely moves, which is hotter than it has any right to be, “odd position to tell me that in.”

Daryl arches an eyebrow, mouth ticking up. “Any other positional ideas?”

 _Me, inside you? You, inside me? Up against a wall?_ “Guess you’ll have to wait and see, Mr. Dixon.”

Daryl leans even closer, for a moment, and Paul feels the curve of his bottom lip against his chin. Just for a second. But it’s enough to make Paul want to cry with want. He’s this close to leaning back, wanting to take this for himself, when-.

“Ugh, get a room!”

Carl.

That’s just. Fantastic.

Daryl climbs off him almost immediately, reaches out a hand to help him up. There’s a red flush over his cheeks, and Paul wants to destroy him in a very, very intimate and sexy way. 

“I’m gonna strangle you, kid.”

Carl, one hand in Judith’s and the other holding a jug of Gatorade, just shrugs. “I was trying to make sure you didn’t die of dehydration. But if you’re going to be sucking tonsils…”

Paul has never wanted to die more in his life than this moment. He’s getting laughed at by a teenager who once got caught by his mom feeling up his girlfriend’s boob.

He has hit an entirely new level of low.

“See if I ever save your life again,” Daryl says, “next time you get grievously injured, I’m letting your dad treat it.”

Carl’s face, blessedly, goes pale.

So, some things work out.

Even if his own life never, ever does.

**___________**

A week after Paul gets roasted by a fifteen year old, he watches his best friend rip a tree from its roots and hurl it at a walker herd. One handed.

For a moment, they both stand there. Panting, covered in blood, Paul almost bent over double from the backpack slung over his shoulders. 

“Huh,” Paul says, which is not at all the accurate response to seeing someone you live with start a deforestation programme right before your eyes, “well.”

Daryl stares at him. Paul stares back. The gurgling growl of walkers trapped under a giant oak drones on like the world’s shittiest backing track.

“I,” Daryl says, and then brushes a bloodied hand over his face, “shit.”

“Thanks for saving my life,” Paul tells him, “with an entire tree.”

“S’it too late to say it was already on its way out?”

 _Yeah,_ Paul thinks, turning his gaze to the bloody mess behind them, _just a little late_.

“I think you should explain some things,” is what Paul decides to respond with, which is at least marginally better than _huh_ , “pretty soon.”

“Yeah,” Daryl sighs, “yeah, I think that’s fair.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr[ is here](http://gaydaryl.tumblr.com/) if you wanna chat about werewolf daryl ! or just daryl in general, honestly. i also have twitter, @gaycrossbow, if that's more your thing


	3. sacramentum of the wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carl got under Daryl's skin from the very first time they locked eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS IT!!!!!! the end of the werewolf daryl fic !!
> 
> warnings for this chapter: talk about child abuse and canon parental death, some sexual stuff though it's mostly cut to black

Carl got under Daryl’s skin from the very first time they locked eyes.

He’d been tiny, back then, all scrawny limbs and funny faces, and Daryl’s always had some fierce need to protect the small and weak. Kids fall under both those categories.

Even when he’d been planning to rob the whole group blind, even when he’d been ready to turn and run, he’d slid his leftovers to Carl and Sophia, to Morales’ kids. Even when he was hungry more often than not, he’d rather the kids’ bellies were full than his or Merle’s.

Carl, two days after the first time they met, had poked at Daryl’s crossbow and asked if he could use it. 

“Pretty sure you’d break those twig arms on it, kiddo,” Daryl had told him, and Carl had crossed his arms over his chest and sighed like Daryl had deeply wounded him.

Anyway. Point of it is: Daryl liked Carl. From the second he peered around Lori’s legs to the moment Daryl had found him pinned to the ground by that Claimer creep.

And then he’d loved him, like some weird uncle figure, because he’d known what that was like. The fear that ran bone deep. The want to protect and feel safe and okay, just for one moment; a moment that never seemed to come these days, and never seemed to last if it did.

He’d made a promise, to himself, a long, long time ago. That he’d never put anyone through what he’s been through. That biting someone was out of the question, no matter what.

And then one of his own got bit and torn into by a dead, growling mouth. Then the kid he’d watched grow far too fast was sentenced to death because he was trying to do something _good_ , and he broke the promise. Then Carl Grimes lifted up his shirt to expose a weeping wound, and Daryl was fucking helpless to do anything but to ask if he was sure, if he wanted help, if he wanted to live.

Carl had said yes. Carl had agreed it was better; had laughed like it was something brilliant when Daryl had shifted to prove himself like Carl’d demanded. 

And now Daryl has a dumbass wolf pup gambolling after him every month and a lot of the time between that. All because of his own childhood trauma.

Yeah, fucking _thanks_ , pops.

**___________**

Paul takes the news about him remarkably well, considering.

After he threw the tree (stupid move, crossbow was already loaded, there was only twenty fucking walkers, they could have taken them), they’d started back to Hilltop, Paul sliding glances at him every few seconds that said _what the fuck_ without his mouth even moving.

By the time they get back through the gates (Glenn slapping Daryl on the back, Maggie laughing at Paul for the state of his hair), Paul’s bouncing on his toes like he’s about to take off and fly.

Since Daryl can turn into a fuck-off huge wolf when the moon says so (and if he’s feeling enough of anything), the thought of Paul turning into a raven isn’t even the weirdest shit that’s crossed his mind today.

The weirdest had probably been _bet I could throw that tree_ , and then _oh shit, I threw that fucking tree._

“So you’re,” Paul tries, and moves his jaw like he’s trying not to laugh, “a literal, actual werewolf.”

“Yeah,” Daryl tells him, and wonders why everyone is always halfway amused by it.

Is it the way he acts? It has to be, right? Something he gives off? He knows he scared the shit out of half his family when they met, but lord. Taking his being a part-time actual beast in stride feels a little rude, somehow.

“Huh,” Paul says, for the eightieth goddamn time since Daryl uprooted an oak and hurled it, “and… does anyone else know?”

Daryl thinks about Rick, and Michonne, and Maggie and Glenn and Carol and all of the rest of his family. He thinks about the fact Maggie _probably_ knows, and the fact Rick definitely doesn’t, because the guy is dumb as a bag of rocks, no matter how many times he’s saved their asses. 

“I turned Carl when he got bit,” he decides on saying, “had to lie about him getting shot, but. He lived.”

Paul’s eyes go wide and he sort of. Collapses against the wall of the trailer. “Holy shit. You can’t die from a bite?”

“Can’t die from a bite,” Daryl confirms, “get sick, sort of like the flu. But something in my weird goddamn wolf genes makes it benign.”

“You’re sort of.” Paul takes a pause, scrubs a hand over his beard. There’s a twig just below his jaw, but Daryl doesn’t point it out. “You could be the cure, then?”

Daryl flinches. Paul averts his eyes for a moment. “Ain’t the cure. Not if it comes with being a fucking monster.”

Paul frowns, bright blue eyes going dim for a moment under the furrow of his brow. He looks pretty, even when he’s a little confused. “You’re not a monster. You saved Carl’s life. My life. All of our lives, more than once, even the people you don’t really like.”

“Don’t count,” Daryl says, because it fucking doesn’t. It doesn’t count when getting angry leads to the risk of him full on shifting into an eight foot long, six foot tall creature right from the jaws of hell. 

“Well,” Paul says, slow, “I think if you asked Rick, or Michonne, or anyone about it, they’d say it was a gift. Carl dying… That would have destroyed us all, I think. And he’s alive, now, regardless, because of you. Even if he does… Turn into a wolf sometimes.”

Daryl bites his lip. Thinks about the look of wonder on Carl’s face as he’d brushed a hand over Daryl’s head when he’d turned. About the way Carl had said _if Judy got bit I could save her_ , like the thing Daryl had burdened him with wasn’t really a burden at all.

“Maybe,” he allows, “still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it.” Paul eyes him for a moment. “So, does this make you, like, a furry?”

“Oh my God. Die.”

**___________**

Paul’s leg is dangling off the trailer roof, beating a rhythm to a song only he can hear.

Daryl stares at his leg for a long, long time, until Paul’s bright eyes peer over the edge and he smirks.

“See something you like?”

“Bit too muscular to fill anyone up,” Daryl says, instead of saying something stupid like _can I kiss your calves, please_. 

Paul’s hair falls into his eyes for a moment, so the only part of his face Daryl can make out in the dim evening light is his soft mouth and trimmed beard. It makes his heart speed up, and he’s abruptly glad Carl’s at Alexandria for the week; if he heard Daryl start panting like a bitch in heat he’d never live it down.

“You’ve been ogling me too much, Mr. Dixon. One would think you want to give me ideas about your intentions.”

Daryl smacks at Paul’s (strong, so strong, Jesus fuck) thigh as he hauls himself up with his loot, bag slung over his shoulder. It lands with a solid, metallic _thunk_ at Paul’s side, and Paul doesn’t waste a moment scrounging through it.

It’s odd, now. Watching him and sensing that Paul feels no different about him than before, even though he knows Daryl could rip him in two with one hand behind his back. Either the guy has no self-preservation, or he trusts Daryl to never lay a hand on him.

Pretty fucking dumb, regardless.

From their nest on top of their trailer, they can see out across all of Hilltop. There’s not many people around this time of night; it’s getting cold out, so the only people awake are the ones on watch or the ones sitting at the graves talking. 

Eerie, almost, when Hilltop is filled with people the rest of the time; when the place is so fucking crammed even Daryl, with his heightened senses, can’t properly navigate himself to Paul without instruction. 

He’d never cared so much about having a place to stay, back Before. Then Rick Grimes got his claws in him and turned him into a fucking domesticated dog instead of something constantly frothing at the mouth for a fight. He went and found himself a family after the world crumbled around him. He’ll never, ever tell anyone, but a sick part of him is glad for the apocalypse.

Paul’s got his jaws locked around a green apple, drool trailing down his beard in silvery lines, and that feral part of his head that never shuts up wants to taste it. He doesn’t, because he has self-restraint. Most of the time.

Daryl fishes out one of Carol’s cookies (delivered by a very happy Jerry the day before along with other supplies), pops it into his mouth. Knows full well he looks like a chipmunk, and doesn’t even give a shit.

“So,” Paul says, crunching his way through half the apple in one bite. A traitorous voice in Daryl’s head says _big mouth_. He silences it with more cookie. “Your whole. Wolf-y deal. Is that why you’re so good at hunting?”

Daryl hums, rocks back on his elbows, crosses his legs over each other. Ursa Major twinkles at them overhead, bright and beautiful. “I was a hunter before I was… this. Got bit when I was about thirteen; already been training myself to hunt since I was a brat. Maybe… Seven?”

Paul chokes. “Seven? You were seven, and you went out in the woods and hunted?”

Daryl blinks. “Yeah. Somethin’ wrong with that?”

“No,” Paul mumbles, but there’s something in the set of the jaw that makes Daryl want to cover himself in dirt and become one with the soil, “just. You were a kid, you know? Feels wrong to think of you out getting dinner when I was-. My mom was still alive, back then, when I was seven, and I never went hungry. Not once.”

Daryl tries not to think about the whistle of a belt in the air and blood in his nose, crusting around his mouth, stolen band aids and barricading his door every single night without fail. “Never had that. My ma died when I was young, too, but she’d been dead a lot longer than the night she burned, I think. Daddy had a way of killing everythin’ about you and making _you_ wanna apologise.”

Paul strokes a hand over the sack Daryl brought their food in. There’s a tremble in his fingers that Daryl pretends not to see. “Sorry. I just-. I’m so fucking sorry, Daryl.”

“Long time ago,” Daryl reminds him, like half his nightmares aren’t about his old man somehow coming through the Hilltop gates and finishing off what he started. Like he doesn’t wake up sweating at the thought of him getting his hands on little Judy or Carl. “Worse things have happened since then.”

And, Christ, isn’t that depressing. That the end of the world still feels like more of a break than his entire adolescence.

“Yeah,” Paul agrees, swallows. Slides a hand inside the pack and retrieves a bottle of that pink lemonade Glenn likes so much. Drinks half of it in one go, throat bobbing, and then wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Just. Still.”

“Yeah.” Then, because it’s the right thing to do, “your mama. She was a good woman?”

Paul’s smile gets caught by the moon as it slides out from a cloud, and Daryl’s blood boils angrily until he clenches his fists to calm himself down. Paul’s so gorgeous it makes his entire soul want to implode like a black hole. “The best. Kept me fed, clothed. Used to dance with me to Whitney Houston in the kitchen while she baked. She was gorgeous, you know? Long, brown hair, big green eyes, heart-shaped face. I-. It scared me, the first time I realised I couldn’t remember her voice. It still hurts if I let it, but I remember her, and that’s sort of all I can ask for, now.”

Daryl swallows. His ma used to hold his hair while he vomited and patch up his wounds and get so drunk she couldn’t see, and then Daryl would return the favor. He can’t remember a time in his life where all he had to worry about was cookies in the oven and a mother who loved him more than life itself.

He knows she must have loved him, in the broken way she loved everything. But all he can remember is the foul smell of their home crumbling and cooked flesh, not her voice, not the way her face looked when she smiled.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” Daryl says, and tries to choke back the feeling in the back of his throat that tastes like ash but isn’t, “it sucks you had to. She sounded amazing. I’d’ve loved to meet her.”

Paul smiles at him, small and intimate, and Daryl’s been in love with him for months but if he hadn’t been, if he hadn’t felt it… That might have done it. That slight twitch of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the glow of his eyes as he tries to hold back tears. “She would have loved you, Daryl.”

_What about you? What about you, Paul, how do you feel about me?_

Instead of saying that, though, he lays back and points out a constellation. Paul takes the distraction to wipe at his wet eyes, before pressing himself right to Daryl’s side, solid and warm and alive.

So fucking beautiful it makes Daryl want to growl and hum and sing.

“That’s polaris,” he points to the right of Barrington House, “the north star. Not the brightest, y’know, but easy to identify.”

Paul blinks at him, slow and smooth, and Daryl tries not to panic at the want that curls in his gut. Is deeply glad for the fact it’s too dark to see his blush.

“Daryl,” Paul says, voice small, “you’re my favorite person in the world. You know that?”

Daryl’s eyes burn, and he closes them tight to stop himself from fucking crying all over the guy he’s in love with. God. He spends too much time around Carl.

“You’re mine, too,” Daryl tells him, and before he gets too scared to stop himself, brushes his pinky finger against the back of Paul’s hand.

He barely holds back from gasping when Paul links their fingers together, warm and safe. Paul’s are smaller than his, daintier; more adept at picking locks, making braids in his hair. Daryl feels weirdly clumsy even as he squeezes against him, fingers big and lumbering and covered in scars from years of self-loathing and hunting to feed himself and his family.

“When you were little,” Paul mumbles, sweet and low. Like he’s scared of puncturing their little bubble of bliss in the middle of hell. Like there aren’t walkers pressed to their walls less than forty yards away. “When you were small, did you ever think about naming a star after yourself?”

“No,” Daryl admits, “not when I was a kid. After, I think, I thought about it a couple times. I dunno. Think a star called Daryl would be awful fuckin’ dumb. A star called Paul… That’s more like it.”

Paul laughs. “If I knew any better, I’d think that was your version of flirting.”

“You wish.”

“Yeah,” Paul says, thumb running over one of the small, circular scars on the webbing of skin between Daryl’s thumb and forefinger. “I do.”

Daryl sort of stops looking at the stars, after that.

**___________**

The thing about the Grimes’ family, is that they’re all sort of terrifying in a comical way.

Daryl once watched Rick rip a guy’s throat out with his teeth, but he’s also seen him fall down a flight of stairs after he got too invested staring at Michonne’s ass.

Case in point:

“Rick is going to fucking kill me dead,” Michonne announces, tugging Maggie into an embrace. It’s less a hug and more a half-nelson, but Maggie doesn’t seem to mind so much. “He’s so fucking stupid. You know he tried to fix one of the tires on that jeep? Managed to break his first two fingers.”

“That’s real inconvenient,” Daryl says, and Michonne glares at him. “What? Jus’ saying, you know, not great for guns.”

“Yes,” Michonne says, and Daryl holds back from laughing by the skin of his teeth, “for guns.”

Glenn glances between them; Maggie, pressed into Michonne’s side, Daryl trying to not lose his shit, Michonne with that suspicious not-smile on her face. “Am I missing something?”

“I pity your wife,” Paul tells him, and Maggie snort-laughs right into Michonne’s shoulder. 

Glenn goes slack-mouthed after a second, realization striking just a moment too late.

“Aw, blind man,” Daryl pats him on the shoulder, “it’s ‘kay if you can’t see what we all do.”

Carl, pushing past Michonne as gently as he can, snorts. “I’ve only got one eye, and even I know that was a disgusting joke and we should put Daryl down.”

“You’ve gotten brave, kid,” Daryl tells him, “squeezed your girlfriend’s b-!”

He cuts himself off with a wheeze when Carl punches him right in the gut. 

Carl smiles sunnily at him, like he isn’t satan’s spawn.

Daryl should never have saved his goddamn life.

“Take it the dumbass isn’t coming?” Glenn asks, after Maggie’s petted his stomach lovingly.

Michonne rolls her eyes. “He is, he’s just taking his sweet time about it. He’s on Judy duty. She ate a snail and now she’s all gassy.” She points at Daryl, then. “You need to stop showing her how to eat bugs.”

“Snail ain’t a bug,” Daryl tells her, “they’re gastropods.”

“Yeah, well, now they’re giving Judith the runs, so unless you want to wash all of her clothes, I’d shut your mouth.”

At that precise moment, Rick comes limping in through the gate, bum knee turned out and Judith on his hip, fingers in a cast. 

Rick does not look Daryl in the eye. Daryl considers suicide.

Most of the group go silent and tense around them. Paul slides into place next to Daryl. Carl laughs so hard his hat falls off. Rick stares at the ground. Judith farts loud enough to excite a passing walker, which quickly gets taken down by an arrow.

“So,” Michonne says.

“So.” Paul echoes.

“Sooo…” Glenn sing-songs, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“Oh, my God.” Maggie says, and pats Rick on the head before taking Judith from him with a smile. “I’ll just leave y’all to it, huh?”

“Please don’t,” Daryl begs, and Rick tenses, crosses his arms over his chest. “Oh, Christ.”

As if on command, Daryl and Rick are left alone together at the opening to Hilltop. Daryl considers self-immolation. It is not the easiest way of killing himself, but by God he will try.

Rick scratches a hand over his beard, and Daryl, because apparently Rick’s lack of intelligence is contagious, blurts out, “Carl got bit.”

That does the trick for making Rick pay attention to him, at least. Even if his eyes go wide and horrified and Daryl has to reach out to steady him.

Rick stares at Daryl’s hand on him. Looks over to Carl’s retreating form. “He got _bit_? When? What happened? How? Where?”

“Uh,” Daryl tries, and coughs into his shoulder, “‘bout four months back.”

Rick looks close to blacking out. “But he’s alive.”

“I know,” Daryl tells him, and sucks in a hard breath. This isn’t the way he’d wanted to do this, but. Now or never. “I. Saved him.”

“But he’s still,” Rick takes a moment, like he’s counting in his head, “got four limbs?”

“He got bit on the side.” _This is going fucking terribly_ , he thinks, and wonders if Earl’s had a breakthrough with that shitty moonshine yet. Hell, maybe he’ll risk his life for peach schnapps, if this conversation keeps going downhill. “Right here.” He demonstrates where the bite had been.

Rick cocks his head, bites his lip. “What did. What are you talking about? Are you sick? Are you okay? Feverish?”

“Jesus, man,” Daryl huffs, “fine. Back when I was a kid, I got bit. Not by a walker, by something different. A wolf, only it wasn’t, not really.”

Rick, bless his heart, catches onto the concept of werewolves quicker than he counts his own son’s appendages. “A werewolf. You got bitten by a werewolf.”

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees, “sounds fuckin’ nuts, right? Anyway, fast forward two an’ a half decades, the world goes to utter shit. Uh, stick with me, okay? Maybe you should sit down.”

Rick slides onto his ass right there in the dirt. “Okay.”

“I got bit. About a week and a half into the Turn, some geek took a bite outta my shoulder. I thought that was the end, you know, I’d watched people get bit and turn before that. And I started gettin’ the chills, fever, everything. And then I puked my unholy fucking guts out, and the bite started healin’ over.”

“You,” Rick takes a trembling little breath, “are immune?”

“I don’t,” Daryl sighs. He really fucking hates himself for doing it like this; in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the Hilltop, Rick pale from shock and hands trembling where he spreads them in the dirt, finger-cast be damned. “Not completely. But I think the first bite I got, the thing that turned me, I think that heals three times as quick, so the infection got pushed out instead of killing me. I thought it was a fluke, like, just got lucky. So I let myself get bit again.”

Rick sways a little. “Obviously. Why wouldn’t you?”

“Man, you started a war with a guy called _Negan_ , don’t pull that on me,” Daryl scoffs. “And the same thing happened. Chills, fever, vomiting, all good. I don’t even have a mark from the bites, anymore; I healed from them in a week, maybe less.”

“Okay,” Rick agrees, “I’ve. Got the concept, go on?”

“Yeah, sure, okay.” Daryl twists his fingers in the hem of his shirt. “So, once a month, more if I feel too much shit, I turn into a great fuck off wolf.”

“Yep,” Rick nods, “I know what werewolves are, Daryl.”

“Four months ago, Carl got hurt. Remember? He said he got shot. The Saviors left him to bleed out, that’s what you thought, what we agreed to tell everyone. Only I saw him in the bathroom, man, saw that bite, and I knew there was a chance I could save his life. And it was small, but I’d rather take that risk than anything else. Asked him, he said yes. So I bit him.”

“You bit him,” Rick says, and Daryl flinches in preparation for a solid shin kick, for a machete to the face, but all he gets is Rick’s jaw trembling and tears flooding down his cheeks, “you saved his life. Daryl, I can’t. I can’t ever fucking _repay_ that, what the fuck?”

“You don’t have to.”

Rick wobbles his way to his feet, like a newborn lamb. He looks a fucking mess; that jacket that’s still stained from blood no matter how many times he bleaches it, the beard that takes up a third of his face, eyes red from tears. 

“You saved my son. God knows how many times. He’s alive, _because of you_ , and so is Judy, and so am I, and Michonne. All of us. You’ve saved us all so many times, Daryl, why didn’t-. Why didn’t you _say_ something? What did you think, brother? That I’d kill you? For this? For anything?”

Daryl swallows. _Merle’s hand on his throat, silver burning into his flesh, anger held back._ “Couldn’t lose you. Any of you. You’re family, the best one I ever fuckin’ had, Rick. Best one _anyone_ ever had. Didn’t wanna take a risk. I turned your kid into a monster, man, and I’m tryin’ to keep him safe, I am, I swear on everything. I’ve taught him everything I know. I saved his life, but he still became like me, and that’s not, it isn’t-.”

He’s not going to fucking cry. He isn’t. He’s not.

Rick hugs him. He does.

“You’re not a monster,” Rick says, fervent and warm into the juncture between neck and collarbone, “you’re good, Daryl, family, my goddamn brother. Everything to me, all of you, I can’t ever thank you enough for this, none of it.”

Daryl sniffles, hugs tight to Rick’s back, thinks about how the first day he met Rick Grimes he’d given him the up-down and thrown squirrels at him. “You ain’t pissed?”

“No, not for this, not ever. Although,” Rick takes a breath, and Daryl’s gut clenches, “was this really the best way you had to brush over the fact you wanted to suck me dry?”

“Depends,” Daryl says, swallows back snot and the panic that’s been in his gut since the day he turned Carl, “did it work?”

“You know what, brother?” Rick clutches at him, tight and warm. “It just fucking might have.”

And, Christ, he knew deep down it was never going to go terribly, but his heart burns knowing it for sure.

**___________**

“You told Dad,” Carl says, out of _fucking nowhere_.

Daryl should never have taught him how to hunt; the fucker’s damn good at it, even if his Dad isn’t. It’s gotten even worse since Daryl saved his life, like his extra new wolf genes makes him even more of a sneak than before. “If you give me a heart attack I’ll come back to life and kill you.”

Carl smiles, and there’s a watery look in his eye that makes Daryl nervous. “I never told you, when you bit me, but. Thank you. For saving my life. I didn’t-... I was getting ready, you know, I even wrote letters for everyone, but I didn’t _want_ to die. I promised Mom I’d beat this world, and the idea of failing her…”

“Kid,” Daryl says, and tries not to cry, “you could never fail your mom. Never.”

“I know,” Carl tells him, and rubs a hand over his eye, “I just-. Fuck. I want you to know it’s worth it. Every time I turn, or feel too much, or the moon comes, it’s worth it, because I’m still going to get to see Judy grow up. I’m still gonna see Michonne, and Dad, and Glenn, and Maggie. And you. And I just need you to know I’m never going to regret that. Not ever. Even when it hurts and feels like being on fire. I thought I was going to die, and you saved my life.”

Daryl’s been crying too much lately. He’s this close to asking Maggie to check if the water’s actually safe to drink. “You don’t gotta thank me for it.”

“But I do,” Carl tells him, draws himself up to his full tight. Looks so much like Rick, all strong shoulders and tight jaw even when he’s crying hard enough his chest is shaking. “Dad told me you feel like a monster, and that’s not-. How could you think that? You _saved me_. Monsters don’t save anyone. Monsters kill and maim and draw blood. You saved my life, and you’ve saved all of us, and. You’re family, Daryl.”

Daryl suddenly gets a front full of weeping teenager, and he immediately brings his hand up to brush through Carl’s hair. “You’re family, kid. All of you. You’ve saved me so many more times. I love you, Carl, you fuckin’ idiot.”

Carl sniffles. Daryl sniffles back.

There’s a pause. “Jesus called me a furry.”

“Son of a _bitch_!”

**___________**

Daryl’s so worn out by the crying he takes a nap. Like an eighty year old. Like a fucking invalid.

He’s never been more embarrassed and well rested in his life, and when he wakes up to Paul’s legs slung over his back, he silently adds _happy_ to that list.

“You make everyone soft,” Paul says, the second he notices Daryl is awake.

“Offensive. Hoped I had more game than that.”

Paul laughs and stretches his entire body across Daryl’s, until his chin rests over Daryl’s shoulder and his thighs hug the curve of his ass. Like the world’s most sexy blanket. “You’re okay, I guess, if you’re into the looks-could-kill thing.”

“And you?” The question’s out before he can think it through, and Paul’s weight goes solid on top of him.

“I’m,” Paul says, slow, “not _not_ into it.”

“S’that your way of saying you’re deeply in love with me?”

Paul shudders a laugh. Daryl hopes to God he doesn’t get a boner from this. “Yes, Daryl, that’s how I tell everyone of my affections. You know when I came out I said I was not-not gay?”

“I’m gonna shank you,” Daryl says, and then, before he loses his nerve, holds Paul up with an arm while he wriggles onto his back.

There’s a pink flush over Paul’s face when he settles back down on Daryl’s stomach, knees digging into the mattress either side of him. Hair over his face, lip bitten between his teeth, eyes slightly darker than normal. “Is that a euphemism?”

“You want it to be a euphemism?” _Please, God, let it be a fucking euphemism._

Paul ducks his head for a moment, looks back at Daryl through his lashes. Daryl is going to fucking die. This is it. His demise. Long run, but this is a fitting end, he thinks. Death before he even gets any dick.

His life is a tragedy.

“Daryl,” Paul’s hands stroke over Daryl’s hips and then higher, thumbs rubbing over the skin below his nipples. Daryl shudders, and Paul’s eyes blow black. “This is. I need to know, okay, this isn’t a one time thing? No fucking and leaving?”

Daryl’s breath stutters in his chest. “We gonna be fucking?”

Paul sighs, stretches his head back. The line of his throat is flushed pink, and Daryl wants to sink his teeth in even if he never will. “Daryl.”

“No,” Daryl tells him, summons up all the courage he’s meant to have, “no fucking and leaving. Been loving you for God knows how long, can’t have you once and let you go.”

Paul shivers on top of him, eyes fluttering. “Okay. Okay. Can I?”

“Paul,” Daryl’s hands settle on the slope of his hips, fingers dragging close to his ass, warm even through denim, “just fucking put your mouth on me.”

Paul, despite everything in his personality that would normally say otherwise, obeys.

And _fuck_ it’s good. So much better than even his copious fantasies, the ones stuffed into his spank bank from now until eternity. This kiss, the soft slide of their mouths, this blows all of those ideas out of the goddamn water.

Paul’s solid above him, arms pressed tight to Daryl’s sides, hot weight that makes Daryl’s dick twitch in his pants like he’s a fucking teenager and not a grown ass man. 

Paul bites at his mouth, sucks Daryl’s lip into his mouth and _sucks_ , and Daryl whimpers and tries not to buck up into him and fails horribly. Paul, thank God, just rolls his hips down to meet him, a steady grind-roll-twist that makes Daryl’s head go fuzzy.

“Not,” Paul pants after a moment, lips flushed pink above him, hair falling over his shoulders like waterfall, something poetic, “not really how I expected our first kiss to go.”

“You thought about it?”

“Thought,” Paul pants again when Daryl slides one hand between his pants and his boxers, “maybe you’d get pissed off at me on a run and kiss me just to shut me up.”

“Would it work?” It’s a good strategy. Maybe he’ll test it out, one day far from now, when he hasn’t got a lapful of Paul Rovia and his heart doesn’t feel like it’s trying to tear out of his chest.

“No,” Paul admits, “but I’d do anything to keep your mouth on me.”

“Christ,” Daryl says, and kisses him again. And again. And again.

Paul mumbles against his mouth, and Daryl doesn’t have to hear it to know what it’s a joke about. He pinches his ass as punishment.

He thinks the whine-groan is proof enough that it works.

**___________**

“So,” Paul gasps, when he’s finally rolled off of Daryl and his shirt is slipping down his shoulder like a very porny version of Jesus, “figured out the answer to a question I didn’t realise I had.”

“Whassat?” He sort of feels like his brain’s been sucked out through his dick; he hadn’t been wrong when he’d thought of Paul having a big mouth. Apparently it’s just also vacuum powered. Sexy, sexy hoover-mouthed Paul.

“If you’d turn when you came.” There’s a grin on his face, and a hickey on his neck, and Daryl is so fucking in love with him. “I couldn’t work out if I’d mind or not.”

“You want to fuck a huge eight foot wolf? That some freaky kink you have?”

Paul eyes him up and down, like Daryl’s a sight for sore eyes. Like Paul doesn’t look like every wet dream he’s ever had. “I haven’t seen said wolf, yet, so I have to withhold judgment.”

Daryl huffs against his throat. “Wanna?”

“Wanna what? Because, I’m going to be honest, I don’t know if I can get it up again that fast.”

“Wanna see the wolf?” It’s not something he’s ever showed anyone like Paul. Carl’s seen, he thinks Maggie’s maybe had a glimpse, and Merle’s watched. 

Paul’s eyes go wide. “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” Daryl tells him, “but do you want to see it?”

“Does it,” Paul’s hand flutters uselessly before landing on Daryl’s hip, which isn’t exactly the way to get him out of the mood right now. Daryl joins their fingers and kisses Paul’s scarred knuckles. “Does it hurt?”

“Like a bitch.”

“Is it fun?”

“Very.”

“I.” Paul takes a breath, eyes going dark once again when Daryl drags the point of a tooth over his fingertip. “God, okay, yes. I’d love to see.”

He’s naked, which is helpful; no tearing through clothes for him, not any more. It’s a fucking nightmare trying to stitch shit back together when they’re more tatters than seams.

He moves back from the bed, shoves it tight against the wall. Smirks when Paul flushes at it, like he’s turned on at the show at strength. Noted. 

He hadn’t lied. It hurts like hell. Like every single one of his bones snapping and re-aligning in the next instant, like fire in his veins, but by the time he’s panting on the ground and tilting his head up at Paul for inspection, it feels worth it.

His wolf eyes aren’t like his person eyes. They’re sharper, take more into focus, but there’s less color, like someone’s slid a filter over the whole world.

He nudges his head into Paul’s bare thigh, and Paul takes a wondering breath before stroking over his head, scratching between his ears. 

Daryl’s leg kicks. Paul cackles.

“Oh, that’s fucking brilliant,” Paul says, and leans his face right against Daryl’s muzzle. The muzzle that’s torn walkers to shreds, eaten bunnies raw. And kisses him, right on the tip of his nose. “God, you’re so fucking pretty, you know that?”

Daryl lets out a noise more muted bark than howl, but Paul still looks amazed by it. 

“Paw,” Paul says, because he’s an asshole. Daryl smacks him in the face with it, because he’s also kind of an asshole.

The brown fur looks vivid, bright against Paul’s pale but flushed skin. There’s streaks of blond in there, patches where the fur never grows right over his back where his scars sit when he’s a person. Paul doesn’t seem to mind about the weird markings, about the fact his -hopefully?- boyfriend’s turned into a eight-foot-long beast who barely fits in the main bedroom of the trailer.

“I love you,” Paul tells him, reverent, like a prayer, like an admission at the mouth of a temple, “so, so fucking much.”

Daryl nudges his face into Paul’s stomach, settles himself over him fully, and Paul laughs. Drags his hands through his fur.

“Good boy,” Paul tells him, and Daryl rolls his eyes, “love of my life.”

Daryl can’t roll his eyes at that. He’s just glad he can’t blush like this.

Paul kisses him between the eyes, and they sleep like that; Paul crushed under a 300 pound wolf, and Daryl so in love it hurts.

**___________**

Daryl’s a person again when he wakes up, Paul’s fingers trailing over the scars on his shoulder blades.

“I like you better like this,” Paul tells him, and Daryl kisses his cheek even though he can smell his breath and it’s nasty. “But the wolf part of you’s cool, too.”

“I like you every way,” Daryl says, and Paul grins at him so wide it looks like it hurts. “Especially naked.”

Paul rolls his eyes. Daryl tangles their fingers together, tugs him close with the leg splayed over Paul’s hip. 

“You still didn’t tell me if you’re a furry.”

“I’m going to kill myself, Paul. Is that what you want? No dick and maximum death?”

“Eh,” Paul says, and drags a hand down Daryl’s stomach towards his cock, “I guess I’ll go with the first one.”

“That’s a great idea. Do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading this!!! i hope it's good and brought you at least a little happiness 
> 
> my tumblr's [here](http://gaydaryl.tumblr.com/) if you wanna talk about werewolf daryl, and i love comments/kudos/feedback!!! also transrickgrimes on twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr's [here](http://gaydaryl.tumblr.com/) if you wanna talk about werewolf daryl, and i love comments/kudos/feedback!!!


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